


A Little Fouetté Never Killed Nobody

by vatreniworld



Series: Luka Wins Everything [6]
Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Ballet, Gen, How Do I Tag, I wonder if I can edit the tags later, Not my first time writing but first time using this system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 00:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vatreniworld/pseuds/vatreniworld
Summary: Sometimes footballers need to be stretched in more ways than one.





	A Little Fouetté Never Killed Nobody

**Author's Note:**

> Musical Inspiration: "Nutcracker" by Straight No Chaser
> 
> I highly recommend you listen to the musical inspiration at least once just for grins. This is also a semi-tribute to my poor family members for coming to all my ballet events in the past - recitals, demonstrations, performances in below-freezing temperatures, and (of course) the Nutcracker.
> 
> I'm new here so please read these first to understand this story better:  
> https://vatreniworld.tumblr.com/post/180379889435/of-microphones-and-manhandling

Ivano frowned at the facade of the building in front of him. "Mama, why are we here?"

Vanja hefted her bag out of the car onto her shoulder. "You'll see in a bit."

Luka unbuckled Sofia from her car seat and hoisted her to rest on his hip. "I'd like to know _where_  we are and why you said Ema would be joining us later."

"Let's just head inside."

Luka and Ivano exchanged worried glances.

Sofia talked to herself nonsensically as she played with the ends of Luka's hair.

The present members of the Modrić family filed inside the building to be find a waiting room.

Luka set Sofia down to run around and glanced at the art on the walls. "A...dance studio?"

The front door flew open to reveal Ema leading the way for the members of Real Madrid. At the end of the procession were Rapha, Casemiro, Keylor, and Marcelo carrying a tied-up Sergio like a Christmas tree.

"He tried to run," Ema said as though it were a reasonable explanation. She pulled a small pair of scissors out of her pocket and snipped the bindings.

"Ema, how much do I have to pay you to _not_  tie me up?" Sergio growled, rubbing the rope burns on his wrists as he scrambled to his feet. "I would have come willingly."

Ema blinked up at him for a moment, considering his statement, before deciding, "You can't afford me, Sergio, and I don't think you would even if you said so."

"Draga," Luka laughed nervously, an uneasy feeling settling in his stomach, "what's going on?"

Vanja nodded. "Each of you need to put on a pair of these," she said as she rummaged through her supposedly bottomless bag.

("How _does_  mama fit all that in her bag?" Ema asked Ivano as they watched Vanja chase behind her charges on a golf cart.

Ivano shrugged. "Mama told me not to meddle with things I didn't understand."

Ema squinted suspiciously, and rattled in one breath, "Are you telling me mama's bag is magic?"

"Where did you get that idea?!"

Sofia clapped giddily. "Mama magic!")

Vanja produced three dozen sets of white leotards and black ballet tights. "I'm pretty sure I got your measurements right, too."

The men went gravely quiet, until Casemiro was brave enough to choke out a strangled, "What?"

* * *

  
"I feel ridiculous," Thibaut said uneasily.

"Not as ridiculous as I look," Luka muttered.

Keylor jerked his chin towards the water fountains. "Why do Rapha and Alvaro look completely at ease in this getup?"

"It's not gonna stay that way very long," Ema said ominously.

Vanja called over the group, "If you're finished changing you can follow Ema into the studio."

Ema turned the handle on the door next to her and ushered her father's teammates inside.

Ballet barres lined every wall of the studio save the front which had three large panes of mirror hung edge to edge. Three stand-alone barres were in the center of the room.

Except it wasn't unoccupied.

The members of Croatia's national team expected to find Luka and his family at the studio. The rest of his Real Madrid teammates: definitely not.

Mario was laying on the floor with his arms and legs spread wide in the shape of a starfish. At the sound of the door opening he groaned, adjusting the leg of his leotard -- or maybe he had jock itch -- "Vanja, what's the meaning of all this?"

At the procession of people behind Ema, Suba's eyes bulged.

Mario gruffed, "What?" and sat up.

Naturally, his focus locked on Sergio first.

"Uh-oh," Peri peeped sheepishly.

"Shit on a duck," Raketa growled.

"Bad news," Odri and Vini said in unison.

In a flurry of bodies and garbled shouts, Real Madrid and national team players alike dogpiled onto their respective resident hot-heads.

Sofia marched through the door over to the spectacle, stood defiantly between the two piles, and declared, "No fighting!"

She glared at Sergio's visible eye under Nacho's armpit. "Okay," he mumbled.

She turned her attention to a squashed Mario under a laid out Tin and a knotted Raketa. "Uncle Mabzo?"

He grumbled, "I make no promises, but maybe for you..."

Satisfied, Sofia beamed and easily helped Nacho, Tin, and Raketa to their feet before turning back and pattering over to Vanja.

After extricating himself from the dogpile, Mario huffed, "Vanja, why are we here?" and tried to stretch out his back.

"To learn some ballet," she responded plainly.

Off to the side, Luka lightly kicked Sergio to check if he was still alive.

Sergio's fingers twitched.

"Still alive," Luka declared.

"Damn," Carvajal joked. "And here I thought we'd finally be able to burn his wardrobe."

Ignoring Sergio's subsequent outburst, Mario growled, "Why the hell are _we_ ," and gestured between himself, Suba, and Čarli, "here, too?"

Vanja shrugged, unperterbed by Mario's sour disposition, flipping through her notebook. "Might do you three good for your positions at your clubs." Without sparing them another glance, she stalked off toward the corner of the room with Sofia twirling around in her own set of black leotard and pink tights.

Mario glared at Luka and snapped, "This is your fault."

Luka gasped, appalled. " _Me_? What did I do?!" he squawked.

"She's your wife."

Luka rolled his eyes. "Right. And you somehow think I can make her change her mind once it's been made up."

Mario, Suba, and Čarli looked at him flatly for a moment.

"You may have a point," Suba offered.

The door to the studio swung open and the room went silent.

A severe woman who looked like she'd survived the French siege of Russia in 1812 stepped into the studio and surveyed the men. Her grey hair slicked back in a tight bun only made her features more severe. Her black walking cane clacked against the floor ominously.

"Vanja," she said coolly, "you told me they were fit." Her eyes raked over Luka's form and added with an accusatory finger, "And that one is malnourished."

Rapha patted Luka on the head. "I'm sure she doesn't mean it," he whispered.

"It's okay. At least she isn't forcing food down my throat like my mother."

Vanja sighed. "They need your help, madame."

The woman tutted, "Looks like I have my work cut out for me. I am Tatiana Konstantinovna. I will be instructing you in the art of ballet and perhaps at the end you'll be able to make something of yourselves. Alright," she tapped her walking cane against the floor twice, "everyone line up at the barre."

When no one dared to move, she clicked her teeth. "Are you all as stupid as you are out of shape? Barre. Now."

The sound of their feet against the floor was a stampede of rhinos.

"We'll be starting with pliés in first position," Tatiana explained. From the center of the room she placed her heels together and turned her legs outward so her knees were nearly aligned with her hips.

"Demi-plié," she bent her knees so her legs formed a diamond shape and returned to her starting position, "and straighten. Demi-plié and straighten. Understood? You'll be doing this for five minutes."

Sergio shrugged. "Can't be that difficult, right?"

Tatiana eyed him cooly. "Then ten minutes of pliés shouldn't be a problem."

* * *

  
"Ramos," Mario grunted from the front of his barre, "when this over, I'm going to kill you." He lost count of how many pliés he'd done three minutes ago. This was hellacious. His thighs burned with the intensity of a thousand suns.

He knew he had a huge bruise forming on his sacrum from where the drill sergeant smarted him with her cane, informing him that if he "didn't tuck his bottom under his hips, he was going to lose it."

Wonderful.

Sergio coughed, "I'll pay you to put me out my misery," a moment before Tatiana backhanded him across the gut.

"You call that using your core?" she sneered. "I've seen corpses with better posture," she pinched the muscle running across his shoulders, earning her a shrill squeak. "And if I hear one more word out of either of you," she jabbed the base of her cane in Mario's direction then back to Sergio, "I'll have you two doing pliés for the rest of class." She shouted over the room, "Place your right foot on the barre and stretch your hamstrings."

Meanwhile, Marcelo -- who Tatiana positioned between Dejan and Šime to keep them from talking -- heaved deep breaths as he tried to flop his foot onto the barre.

Šime frowned and leaned forward as best he could without snapping his hamstring and whispered albeit shakier than usual, "You okay there?"

Sweat cascaded down Marcelo's face like a waterfall, dropping off his chin to splatter on the wooden floors. Tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, he panted, "I crave the sweet release of death."

"Vieira!" Tatiana snapped. "If you can't keep your sweat under control, at least bother to mop it up with a towel. I won't have anyone hurting themselves because your sweat glands couldn't handle a bit of stretching."

Marcelo gulped over the scratchy patch in his throat from thirst. He asked, "Could we turn on the air conditioning,...please?"

"No," was her terse reply. "Do you want to undo all the work I've just done to your muscles?"

At the other end of the room on a separate barre, Suba rubbed the knot forming on his inner thigh and grunted, "Doesn't sound like such a bad idea," while he held the tears in his eyes at bay.

Marcelo deflated, his normally bouncy hair folding lifelessly over his face. Incidentally, the moment that he took to relax allowed gravity to pull his body further into the stretch at the barre.

Marcelo whined under his breath.

Dejan and Šime grimaced on either side of the Brazilian.

At the front of the room, sitting against the mirrors, Ema and Ivano smothered their laughter behind their hands.

"Why are you two laughing?" Vanja asked as she continued to write notes for upcoming matches. "You're joining them."

"We're what?" Ivano and Ema gulped simultaneously.

Sofia -- already garbed in a black leotard, pink tights, and the tiniest ballet slippers possible -- smiled and made her way over to the nearest barre.

The color drained out of Ivano's face. His hands never felt so cold. He began, "But, mama--"

"You want your ball control to improve, right?" Vanja retorted evenly.

Ivano averted his gaze and pouted. "Yes, mama."

"Go change in the bathroom, then," she said, handing sets of leotards and tights to him and Ema.

"It'll be so weird seeing them in this getup," said Šime. He peeked down at his own attire. "Not that we don't look any less weird."

"'Specially Ema," Dejan added.

Ema hid her hand behind her back and twisted her fingers in a corkscrew motion.

A second later, Dejan's feet slipped out from under him. He crashed to the floor with a dull thud and a stifled groan.

Vanja gave Ema a pointed look and pushed her and Ivano towards the bathrooms.

Tatiana stalked over to a winded Dejan and peered down her nose. "If you had heeded my instructions about your center line you wouldn't be in this situation," she stated, unimpressed. "Or perhaps you were too clumsy for even me to train."

Dejan gaped and breathed an affronted, "Clumsy?" before his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

"Oh look," Andrej said with a tone of morbid fascination. "Dejo's dissolving into the floor."

Ante found it pertinent to add, "I've only seen Mandžo leave him that destroyed."

Čarli pinched the deep line forming between his brows, groaning, "Why do you two sound impressed?"

Peri sighed, "Just be grateful they haven't tried some high-stakes daredevil shit to get in Mario's good graces."

* * *

  
"Isco," Tatiana asked, tone bordering on exasperated, "have your feet always been this immobile?" Her fingers dug into his heel as she tried to turn it into the appropriate position. She pressed her thumb into the arch of his foot. "I would have a better chance breaking your feet than making them point."

Isco, though afraid to answer, still felt compelled to speak. "I think so...Sorry."

"Look," Tatiana ordered and pointed off to the right.

All heads swiveled.

Sofia stood on a shaky leg and tried to point her foot out to the side. She braced her weight by leaning one hand into the wall next to her and frowned at her foot, trying to shape it into submission. Much like her father, she nibbled on her lower lip in frustration.

Suddenly aware that every pair of eyes in the room was on her, Sofia turned her attention to the men and waved. The motion threw off her balance enough that she plopped on her bottom. True to form, she puffed her cheeks out and crawled back to her feet to try again.

Tatiana approached Sofia. She knelt down adjusted Sofia's foot with a far gentler and more patient touch than anything she'd deigned to offer any of her new footballer students. "Turn your leg like this and point your foot like this," she cooed. "Keep trying."

Sofia nodded, resolve hardened.

Pushing to a stand, Tatiana turned on a dime and fixed the rest of the room with a flat stare. Any indication that she contained a spec of warmth in her body vanished without a trace.

Sergio muttered, "My balls just shrank back inside me."

Vini, horrified, opened his mouth to say something, _anything_  -- perhaps about "too much information" or "not very captainly of him" -- only to bite his tongue and return his gaze forward.

Tatiana explained, oblivious (or unbothered) to the dejected and exhausted mood of the room, "If a toddler two years of age--"

"Fourteen months," Vanja corrected.

"If a fourteen-month-old toddler can hold a simple position, you lot have nothing to complain about."

Luka wondered how much of that was genuine muscle control and how much of it happened to be Sofia's super strength.

"Next," Tatiana said, tapping her cane twice more, "grand battement."

Isco said to himself, "I don't think that'll help my feet problems."

* * *

  
Luka inhaled as much air as he could against the knot in his chest. His superspeed did him absolutely no good in this situation. Sure, he was relatively flexible compared to most of his teammates here, but that didn't mean he wasn't suffering with the rest of them.

Domo was the only exclusion to the rule, it seemed. He grabbed his foot and pulled it into the air until his knee was near centimeters from his chest. "I don't know what you guys are complaining about. This is fun."

"Shut up, Domo," Šime gritted through tightly clenched teeth.

Tatiana pulled Šime's leg up to just above the horizontal.

He squawked through his teeth.

"Breathe through it," she ordered.

Šime's breaths turned into something reminiscent of a woman in labor.

(Despite the malnourished jab earlier, Tatiana did compliment Luka during...an exercise that had a name he couldn't remember...that he had good range of hip flexibility for "someone with no training." It felt like a backhanded compliment, but he'd take it, especially since Sergio and Mario were still stuck on pliés.)

Luka glanced sideways to find Thibaut and Keylor trying to keep Tin -- who fought valiantly to keep his balance during rond de jambe en l'air -- from falling over from exhaustion. It proved to be a fruitless effort as Tin swayed the other way and faceplanted into Rapha's shoulder blades.

Keylor grabbed the young defender by the shoulders and pulled him back to a stand. "Kid...kid? You awake?"

"Now," Tatiana exclaimed as she dropped Šime's leg and walked away from his slumped form, "push these three barres away and move to the center arm's-length apart."

"Does that mean we can stop this?" Sergio begged, stuck in a demi-plié.

"Yes. I need to powder my nose. When I return I expect you all to be ready for changments and pirouettes."

The moment she was out of earshot, ninety percent of the occupants made a mad dash for the door.

"You're still in leotards and tights," Vanja commented.

"Dignity be damned," Raketa hissed as he pushed Mateo across the threshold. "I'm not spending another minute in here."

"Doesn't Althea want to take ballet lessons? I'm sure she'd be proud of you."

Raketa dropped his forehead against the frame of the door. "Do it for Althea...Do it for Althea..."

Mario grabbed Čarli and Suba. "We have no such obligations," he slurred and shot through the building to the parking lot, leaving only the sounds of screeching tires in their wakes.

Luka looked around the room at the remaining team members: a hyper Domo, a praying Raketa, a pair of bemused Thibaut and Keylor, a drained Tin, and an unscathed Vini with Odri and Regui leaning against him for support.

Vanja looked up from her notes. "Since you didn't turn tail, dinner's on me after this." She smiled.

"Woooo," Odri and Regui droned and pumped their fists in the air with far less enthusiasm than they usually showed towards the promise of food.

When Tatiana returned, she made no mention that the majority of the class was gone. "I'll demonstrate how to do changments on the fourteen-month-old."

**Author's Note:**

> *Hadaway's "What Is Love?" blares in the distance*  
> I don't know what to say other than this is pure crack. Regardless I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> By the way, most ballet instructors aren't like this but I did have ONE in particular that inspired Tatiana.


End file.
